Geocode with StreetMap Premium locators in ArcGIS Pro

The locators are built like those used for ArcGIS World Geocoding Service. GCS_WGS_1984 is the coordinate system for all StreetMap Premium locators.

The locators are included with each StreetMap Premium release, as well as the separate Locator Update releases on My Esri. Sign in to your My Esri account to see the download files for the locators. All download files are in 7z format, and the data may span multiple files (so all files must be downloaded for the files to unzip correctly). If you do not already have 7-Zip installed on your computer, you will need to install this free software from www.7-zip.org. Once all the files are downloaded from My Esri and unzipped on your computer, you can add a locator in ArcGIS Pro by browsing to the location where the files were unzipped. The locators are available for geocoding in ArcGIS Pro as long as you are licensed for the proper regional StreetMap Premium extension (for example, StreetMap Premium North America).

Note:

If you do not have the correct StreetMap Premium extension, a red exclamation point () appears next to the country locator name in the Catalog pane under Project > Locators, and the country locator name is unavailable in the Locate pane, under the Options button , in Provider Settings. For information about obtaining the StreetMap Premium extension, see Enable a StreetMap Premium extension.

Locators for geocoding

StreetMap Premium includes a set of locators that provide the following benefits:

• Small and efficient locator file sizes that require fewer system resources, such as RAM.

  Note:

  To create even smaller locator file sizes, use the Clip Locator geoprocessing tool to clip a StreetMap Premium locator to your area of interest.

• Address-matching logic to deal with poorly formatted addresses and spelling errors.
• Geosearch and batch geocoding of points of interest, such as the White House, the Golden Gate Bridge, or McDonald's.
• Each locator includes data for all match types (for example, PointAddress, StreetAddress, POIs, Postal, Admin, and so forth).
• Ability to choose the Routing Location (the street centerline or entry point on the street) or the Address Location (the parcel or rooftop centroid) for batch geocoding results.
• Ability to filter the batch geocoding results by specific geocoding match type, such as address types, postal, points of interest, and coordinates.
• Enhanced support for street intersection geocoding that recognizes not only physical but also logical intersections, such as underpasses and overpasses, cul-de-sacs, and roundabouts.
• Enhanced support for matching house numbers that fall outside the existing street address house number range.
• Multiple countries are contained in one regional locator file, so batch geocoding can be run in one or multiple countries.
• Ability to add custom output fields from a polygon layer to the locator with the Add Polygon Fields to Locator tool. Conversely, delete the custom output fields with the Delete Polygon Fields from Locator tool.
• Control over the type of returned results in reverse geocoding (for example, points of interest, postal, and so on) when the locator is published as a service.
• Ability to convert large local tables of addresses or places of interest into points in a feature class or as a .csv or .xls table with the Geocode File geoprocessing tool when the locator is published as a geocoding service and hosted on an Enterprise portal.

Note:

It is recommended that you always use these locators with the latest releases of ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Enterprise, and that you review and install appropriate patches from 2023 patches on the ArcGIS website. A StreetMap Premium extension for ArcGIS Enterprise and ArcGIS Pro is required for the locators or a geocoding service to function correctly. To create a geocoding service using these locators, you may publish them from ArcGIS Pro to your portal, or publish them from ArcGIS Pro directly to your server; no Portal for ArcGIS installation is necessary. For either option, you must install the StreetMap Premium extension for both ArcGIS Enterprise and ArcGIS Pro. If you purchase a StreetMap Premium Enterprise license, you will automatically receive both extensions from Customer Service. To publish from ArcGIS Pro directly to your server, use the following method:

1. First, create a connection to your server. See Connect to a GIS server for information on how to create server connections. On the Add ArcGIS Server Connection dialog box, add your server URL, username, and password, and under Save Login, check the Windows Credential Manager check box. If the connection is successful, the server connection is visible in the Catalog pane, under Servers.
2. In the Catalog pane, under Servers, right-click your server connection, click Publish, and click Geocode Service. On the Publish Geocode Service dialog box, enter the service details and finish publishing the locator.

For details about publishing and using the locators in ArcGIS Enterprise, see the Share a locator and Introduction to finding places on a map topics in the ArcGIS Pro help. To restrict use of a geocoding service to specific users in your organization, create a group in your Enterprise portal. Then, publish a geocoding service and share the service with only that group. Invite the designated users to the group.

If you notice the results of batch geocoding in ArcGIS Pro are producing inconsistent results for larger locators such as the USA or North America locators, change the WarmUp property in the .loc file of the locator from WarmUp = False to WarmUp = True in a text editor such as Notepad++. When using a geocoding service created from these larger locators, the locators are warmed up in ArcGIS Server, but not by default in ArcGIS Pro.

For details about optimizing performance for geocoding services published from the locators in ArcGIS Enterprise, see the ArcGIS StreetMap Premium help.

The following geocoding match types and category filtering are supported in the locators, although not all countries contain data for every level: Address (subaddress, point address, street address, distance marker, street intersection, and street name), Postal, Populated Place (block, sector, neighborhood, district, city, metro area, subregion, region, territory, country, and zone), Points of Interest, and Coordinates.

You can use categories with the locators if, for instance, you want to geocode to only one or two match types (for example, PointAddress, StreetAddress, and so on). You can do this on the Locator Properties dialog box in ArcGIS Pro by right-clicking the locator in the Catalog pane and clicking Locator Properties. Click Geocoding options on the left, and scroll down to the Categories to support section, where you can select only the categories that you want to enable. If you're using the Geocode Addresses tool in ArcGIS Pro to do batch geocoding, you do not need to change categories in the locator properties, since the option to specify categories is already part of the tool's dialog box.

If you're using categories to return only SubAddress, PointAddress, and StreetAddress matches, the Minimum match score setting should be adjusted, which you can also do in the locator properties under Geocoding options. Esri recommends using a value of 94, which will maximize your match rate without introducing an unacceptable number of false positive matches. This can be adjusted if you find it is too restrictive (too high) and excludes too many good matches, or if it is not restrictive enough (too low) and allows too many false positives. For example, if your input addresses are clean and properly formatted, a higher Minimum match score value may be used. Conversely, if your input addresses are of a lower quality because of missing address components or extra information, a lower value may result in more matches. Regardless of the number of categories that you specify, it is a good practice to review your own input address data and geocoding match results when deciding on a Minimum match score value that best suits your needs.

For more details about the geocoding coverage, quality levels for each country, and category filtering, see ArcGIS REST API Geocode data coverage on the ArcGIS Developer website.

Input mapping fields for addresses are standardized across the global locators and include the Address, Postal, Neighborhood, City, Subregion, and Region fields, although some countries do not use all four of the following administrative place fields as input:

• Neighborhood—Smaller than City
• City—City or equivalent
• Subregion—Typically larger than City but smaller than Region
• Region—State or Province or equivalent

When you use ArcGIS Pro for geocoding, you can browse for any of these locators. For help finding addresses or geocoding tables with these locators, see Tutorial: Find addresses.

Suggestions functionality is available in the locators, whether used directly in ArcGIS Pro or when published as a geocoding service. After publishing a locator, you can consume the suggestions REST API in your own applications.

Locator properties

Additional locator properties include support for the following:

• Custom intersection connectors (for single-country locators), for example, &, @, |, and
• Preferred city names
• Preferred street names

For multicountry locators such as Europe.loc, the intersection connectors property is not available for editing, as each country has a unique set of intersection connectors.

File output field definitions

The following file output field definitions may be helpful:

• Addr_type—The match type for an address. Possible values are as follows:
  • SubAddress—A subset of point address with associated house numbers, building or unit numbers, and street names.
  • PointAddress—Point address with associated house numbers and street names.
  • BuildingName—Point address with an associated building name.
  • StreetAddress—Street centerlines with address ranges.
  • StreetInt—Street intersections derived from StreetAddress data.
  • StreetAddressExt—An interpolated StreetAddress match when the house number component of the address falls outside the existing StreetAddress house number range.
  • DistanceMarker—Street address that represents the linear distance along a street, typically in kilometers or miles from a designated origin location.
  • StreetMidBlock—The estimated midpoint of the street segments that include the house numbers represented by the block number or block range. The location returned for a StreetMidBlock match is more precise than that of a StreetName match, but less precise than a StreetAddress match. Currently only functional for USA. For geocoding services, Street Midblock is supported as a value for the category parameter. It allows locations with Addr_type value StreetMidblock to be included in geocoding responses when the category parameter values Street Midblock or Address are passed in the request.
  • StreetName—Street centerlines with associated street names (no numbered address ranges).
  • Locality—Administrative areas such as municipalities, cities, and neighborhoods; typically the smallest administrative area.
  • PostalLoc—Postal code points combined with administrative boundaries.
  • PostalExt—Extended postal code points such as USPS ZIP+4.
  • Postal—Postal code points.
  • POI—Points of interest, such as populated places, business names, landmarks, and geographic names.
  • LatLong—An x,y coordinate pair is used for the search input.
  • XY-XY—Match based on the assumption that the first coordinate in the input is longitude and the second coordinate in the input is latitude.
  • YX-YX—Match based on the assumption that the first coordinate in the input is latitude and the second coordinate in the input is longitude.
  • MGRS—A Military Grid Reference System location.
• Match_addr—The full, matched address formatted in the local country address schema. This is the correct address format based on address standards for a country.
• Status
  • M—Match. The returned address matches the request and is the highest-scoring candidate.
  • T—Tie. The returned address matches the request but has the same score as one or more additional candidates.
  • U—Unmatch. No addresses match the request.
• Score—A number from 1 to 100 indicating the degree to which the input tokens in a geocoding request match the address components in a candidate record. A score of 100 represents a perfect match, while lower scores represent decreasing match accuracy. A score of 0 represents an unmatch; no addresses match the request.
• Side—For SubAddress, PointAddress, and StreetAddress matches, this field indicates which side of the street (L or R) the address falls on relative to feature digitization rather than direction of travel along the street.
• DisplayX/DisplayY—For SubAddress and PointAddress matches, these fields store the decimal degree coordinates for the parcel centroid or rooftop centroid associated with each address, as the geocoded point feature is located on the street segment near the main entrance to the property by default.

  Note:

  When batch geocoding in ArcGIS Pro with the Geocode Addresses tool, the locators provide the option to set Preferred Location Type to either the Routing Location setting (the street centerline or entry point on the street) or the Address Location setting (the parcel centroid or rooftop centroid) for the geocoded results. You can also manage this in the locator files so that you get the preferred location when using Locate in ArcGIS Pro. Right-click the locator in Catalog and click Locator Properties. Click Geocoding options on the left. Under Preferred location type, choose Routing Location or Address Location.

• Distance—The physical distance, in meters, from a candidate to a specified location. The Distance output value is calculated for each candidate when the Location input parameter is passed in a request using the Find or findAddressCandidates methods. If the Location parameter is not passed in a request, the value of Distance is zero.

For more information on the output fields in the geocoding results, see What's included in the geocoded results in the ArcGIS Pro help.

For more information on the output fields when using the locators to publish geocoding services, see the ArcGIS REST API: World Geocoding Service documentation on the ArcGIS Developer website.